Displaying items by tag: portland museum of art

The Portland Museum of Art has acquired two major new works: River Cove by Andrew Wyeth and Winslow Homer's An Open Window.
According to the museum, An Open Window, painted in 1872,  fills a gap in its Homer collections, bridging early works from the 1860's and later compositions from the 1890's.

A pair of stolen N.C. Wyeth paintings worth up to $500,000 apiece have been recovered and will be displayed in Maine along with four other stolen paintings recouped nearly a year ago in California, officials said Thursday.

The two paintings were recovered last month when a third party surrendered them to a retired FBI agent in the Boston area, Harold Shaw, special agent in charge of the bureau's Boston field office, told reporters at the Portland Museum of Art, where the paintings were on display.

Three Maine museums have received nearly $1 million in federal funding to improve storage at the Monhegan Museum and Maine Historical Society and reinstall the collection at the Portland Museum of Art.

The PMA received $400,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities; Monhegan and the historical society each received $250,000, with the condition that each raises $50,000 in matching grants.

In one of his final acts as director of the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, Malcolm Rogers will visit Portland to talk about 21st-century museums.

Rogers, who retires from the MFA at the end of July after 21 years, will talk about how museums must adapt to the times in a discussion at 6 p.m. July 21 at Hannaford Hall on the Portland campus of the University of Southern Maine. His talk is part of the Bernard Osher Lecture Series of the Portland Museum of Art.

"Directors’ Cut: Selections from the Maine Art Museum Trail" presents art from Maine’s most-renowned museums—bringing the best art Maine has to offer together for the first time. The exhibition is on view at the Portland Museum of Art from May 21, 2015 through September 20, 2015.

Art and culture has defined the identity of Maine since artists began visiting Monhegan Island and trekking up Mount Katahdin before Maine even became a state.

With a squirming baby and a bowl of fruit, a mother and her family look as if they could be having a picnic under threatening skies.

But look deeper. The mother is Mary and she's handing Jesus a piece of fruit, an echo of Eve handing Adam an apple. Her far-off gaze conveys sadness at knowing what the future holds. The friend is Mary Magdalene, the poster girl for sin, casting her eyes down in penitence.  

The fifth and latest installment of the Portland Art Museum's Masterworks series brings El Greco's "Holy Family With Saint Mary Magdalen" to Portland through April 5.

The Portland Museum of Art placed the Robert Indiana sculpture “Seven” in front of the museum Monday morning. The steel sculpture, which announces the museum’s presence at 7 Congress Square, will be celebrated at 5:30 p.m. Friday as part of the city’s First Friday Art Walk.

Indiana, 86, lives on Vinalhaven off Rockland. “This is a public announcement that 7 Congress Square will always be a place for art,” said chief curator Jessica May. She called Indiana “one of the state’s most beloved artists,” and said placing art outside the museum is part of a larger effort to engage with the public whenever possible.

The year 1534 was crucial to the history of the United States of America.

It was then that the first Act of Supremacy was instituted. These acts granted King Henry VIII royal supremacy over England and established the Church of England, thus severing all ties with Rome. It was in this legal, religious, governmental and cultural context that the Puritans came to be, including the ones who came on the Mayflower to what is now New England.

In England, the Pilgrims’ religious practices were considered sedition. They were forced to flee in secret to Holland, where they experienced the functional separation of church and state – which they imparted to one of our country’s three fundamental founding documents, the Mayflower Compact.

Last month, Colby College Museum of Art put on a view a 1968 painting by Joan Mitchell that museum director Sharon Corwin believes is the best example of abstract expressionism in Maine. Next month, the Portland Museum of Art will unveil an 8-foot-tall steel “Seven” sculpture by Robert Indiana, once rejected by the Prince of Monaco, in the pedestrian plaza out front.

The two works share few similarities, but they represent the latest high-profile acquisitions by two leading museums in Maine and highlight the challenges facing curators and museum directors as they shape collections across the state.

In both instances, the museums acquired the art because benefactors took personal interest in bringing it to Maine.

Maine’s Portland Museum of Art (PMA) spent $2.3 million on a .57-acre plot of land surrounding Winslow Homer’s former studio on Prouts Neck in Scarborough to preserve the view the legendary painter had of the Atlantic Ocean. The U-shaped parcel of land, which surrounds the studio on either side, beginning at the small road that leads to it, runs down to Cliff Walk, a publicly owned waterfront space. According to the Portland Press Herald, it had belonged to Doris Homer, who died in 2009. She was the widow of the artist’s nephew.

The PMA restored Homer’s studio and has been conducting public tours of it since 2012.